Philosophy - Essay Example Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz’s concept of substance, like many other philosophers, was influenced by the Aristotelian concept of substance, conceived as that which bears properties but is not itself a property. However, it is interesting that while Leibniz more or less subscribed to this view, he rejected Spinoza’s monistic understanding of substance as a singular reality. He differed radically from both Descartes and Spinoza as regards the relation of mind and matter, and as regards the number of substances. It can be recalled that Descartes allowed for three substances, namely, God, mind, and matter, and that the essence of matter was extension. For Spinoza, he admitted God alone as the singular substance, while holding that both extension and thought are attributes of God. For Leibniz, he held that extension cannot be an attribute of a substance because there is a plurality of individual substances, and this he termed as “monadsâ€.
